After last week’s Health-e-Byte about Reminiscence Therapy (RT) and Chris Hemsworth’s documentary A Road Trip to Remember, I received several questions about how to best implement RT if one isn’t in a position to ride a motor bike with their father to the remote town of Bulman (also known as Gulin Gulin) in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Never fear, a solution is here!
Reminiscence therapy is highly flexible and can be adapted to different settings depending on people’s needs:
- One-on-One Sessions at Home — Simply use photos, objects or music as prompts to revive memories and stories about the person’s past. This alone has been found to help with mood, cognition and quality of life.
- Group Sessions — People with dementia can meet on a weekly basis to share stories of their past guided by a facilitator. This is a great way to encourage socialisation, reduce isolation, build friendships, foster a sense of belonging, and improve communication.
- Create a Life Story Book — This is a physical or digital scrapbook filled with photographs, narratives, and personal memories. This not only helps the person with dementia reconnect to their history, it also gives caregivers a resource to understand the individual’s life.
- Keep it natural and simple — RT doesn’t have to be a structured exercise. Regular informal conversations using prompts can become a natural, supportive daily routine. Recipes from the past or the smell of home-cooking can be strong memory prompts at meal times. Telling old jokes or commenting on how things are done differently today can also stir up stories of pride from the past.
Because long-term memories are often more intact than short-term ones, RT offers a way to tap into those preserved parts of the brain and strengthen them.
Beyond clinical outcomes, RT helps restore a sense of dignity and connection. For a person with Alzheimer’s, being asked about ‘the good old days’ and having someone genuinely listen can reaffirm who they are beyond the disease.
If you’d like to download a PDF of resources to help you implement Reminiscence Therapy into your specific situation, click here.
In the meantime, I encourage you to watch Chris Hemsworth’s moving documentary A Road Trip to Remember.
In A Road Trip to Remember, Chris turns the camera on his own family after his dad’s recent Alzheimer’s diagnosis. They embark on a motorbike trip into their past, exploring the science of social connection and how it can support memory function. They revisit meaningful places and faces, capturing it all as a home movie, and reviving treasured recollections. Here’s the link to the trailer.
I was privileged to attend a special preview screening of the film followed by a Q&A with Chris Hemsworth and clinical psychologist, Dr Suraj Samtani, at Home of the Arts (HOTA) on the Gold Coast two weeks ago. It premiered November 24th on Disney+.
Please share this Health-e-Byte with anyone who is struggling to connect with someone who has been diagnosed with dementia.
